


Facing The Tiger's Teeth

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-26
Updated: 2009-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:15:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is no fairy tale ending, he told her. This isn't how it's going to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Facing The Tiger's Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Prompts Wish List Fic Exchange](http://community.livejournal.com/bell_flint/35707.html) at the LJ community "bell_flint."

_Slashed 'cross the back,  
your spine almost snapped.  
I put three bullets in its face,  
and I hung it from a tree,  
for the other ones to see  
what happens if  
you mess with me._  
\-- "I'll never tear you apart" by Martin Tielli

Katie Bell had known what she was doing when she joined the DA in Hogwarts and the Order of the Phoenix once she graduated. She knew what she was doing when she pushed the Muggleborn wizards and witches ahead of her as they escaped the safe house when the Death Eaters attacked it. She had known exactly what would happen to her when her wand was snapped in two and the six Death Eaters surrounded her and began casting curses. She had known, when her arm was twisted up behind her back and she was forced to the floor as her clothes were ripped from her body, what was happening next.

Knowing didn't help stop the pain and humiliation, and knowing didn't help her fight them off. Knowing didn't stop them from leaving her broken and bloody on the floor, lying in a pool of her own blood wishing for death.

There was no way to tell how long she was trapped there, unable to move or do more than sob from the pain of it. She whimpered when the door was opened, when she was afraid they were back to start it all over again or finish her off for good. But it was Marcus Flint standing in the doorway, cursing up a storm at the sight of her. He wrapped her up in his robes and brought her straight to St. Mungo's. She was shaking so hard at the contact that she couldn't ask him why he was helping her, why it had affected him so much to see her that way.

He never visited her there, and she never asked for him. She never talked about him when the Aurors and Order members came in to question her about the events. She answered the questions, numb and cold and shivering all the while, her voice not even sounding like her own. It felt like they poked and prodded at the wounds she carried, as if she was laid bare and on display all over again. This was cold and calculated, this was stripping her bare for details. She had only seen two of the six faces, but heard all of their voices. The two faces she had seen were vaguely familiar, in that "I know I saw them at Hogwarts once or twice" kind of way, yet the Aurors kept going over and over every last detail she could remember, as if she could ever forget what happened. As if she could leave any of it behind.

She escaped that safe house, but she couldn't escape the dreams that kept coming, the nightmares that twisted what happened and somehow made it a thousand times worse. As safe as Mungo's was, with its continual presence of security staff, orderlies and Healers, she couldn't stay there for long. It felt like the walls were closing in, as if the well-meaning whispers would make her come undone as soon as she turned her head.

It was easy enough to escape St. Mungo's, to sign herself out against medical advice and join the fray in the last battle at Hogwarts. Katie had hoped that it would exorcise the demons that still clung to her, the ones that left her shattered and in tears every night when she could finally sleep. She thought she saw Marcus Flint there, but he had to be some kind of apparition, silent and tall, towering over her. It had to be some odd way her mind worked, trying to find some semblance of calm amidst the wreckage of her mind.

Katie curled up in her family's home, refusing to return to Mungo's. She had spent nearly a year there between her seventh year and now this year with the Order. The last place she wanted to be was the hospital, even though she couldn't stand being alone. She had gotten a flat after graduating Hogwarts, but couldn't stay there. She couldn't even box up her things. Her older brother and his girlfriend did that for her as she sat in her parents' sitting room, arms wrapped tight around her legs. She couldn't face the reminder of who she used to be, that fearless girl who had willingly pushed others to freedom no matter what the personal cost would be.

Katie wasn't that girl anymore. She didn't think she could be, no matter how much she wanted to be.

Katie's mother, bless her, never asked for explanations for any of the screaming from nightmares in the middle of the night. She never asked why Katie didn't want to be left alone during the day, why it took forever for her to unwind enough at night to even go to bed, let alone fall asleep. She never asked why Katie didn't leave the house, why she didn't want to go shopping or to go to work. She never made noises about Katie doing anything, which was what she needed at the time. Her brother was making noises enough for the family, asking if she was going to martyr herself for a war she didn't die in. Their father had died in the first war, and Katie wondered if he would have been just as broken as she was if he had survived the Death Eater torture he had been put under.

"Summer's coming to a close," her mother mentioned over tea one day. "I suppose I should go out somewhere. Where would you like to go?"

Katie could suddenly see herself growing old with her mother, becoming one of those spinsters of old, the maiden aunt that children were almost afraid to go to. She forced a smile to her face and shook her head. "I think I'll stay home."

Her mother merely shrugged. "You'll be all right at home, dear?"

No. Never. Not ever again.

But Katie didn't say the words that simmered beneath the surface of her mind. "I'll be fine."

She was fine for perhaps the first fifteen minutes. Then the weight of the silence pressed in, thick and heavy, reminding her of the silence in that lost house as she choked on her own bloody breath. It was too late to join her mother, too late to call her back. With trembling fingers, she scratched out a note on parchment and had the family owl deliver it to Marcus Flint. There was no one else to ask, no one else she could think of that would help her feel safe at that point.

To her surprise, he showed up on her doorstep inside of ten minutes. His knock was confident, his expression almost stony. "Are you all right?" he asked, voice concerned. There was that rough edge she remembered from his cursing, the tone that had made her think at the time that he could have single handedly disemboweled all six men just for looking at her, let alone hurting her. Katie shook her head mutely, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. He gathered her up into his arms and tucked her against him, his heart beating staccato under her ear.

Her brother had tried to hug her at Mungo's and she had recoiled from the touch, barely able to keep from screaming. With Marcus, she was able to relax into his touch and openly sob. "I can't do this," she sobbed, leaning into him. "I can't function this way."

"Tell me what's happening."

It never occurred to her why he should care, why he would have been there. The words tumbled out of her mouth, disjointed and disconnected. The nightmares, the shivers, the whispers, the reminders, the flashes of fear that she could never quite shake, even in her own home. There were wards and she had checked them all herself during the war. It didn't matter. She simply didn't feel safe.

"Why did you call me here today?" he asked her, voice soft. Never once did he move, did he interrupt her.

"Thinking of you was the only thing keeping me sane," she said miserably. She burrowed her face against his chest, inhaling his scent. It was calming, even if she couldn't think of why that would be.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, carefully unknotting it. She hadn't even combed it that morning. "Did you tell the Aurors about these nightmares?" he asked, voice quiet. "Did you tell them any of it?"

Katie shook her head. "They didn't care. They only wanted names and faces and whatever details I could remember. They didn't care what I wanted," she whispered. She pulled back and looked up at him with despair etched on her face. "Why didn't you come visit me? You brought me there, but then you left me."

Marcus sat her down in the sitting room. "There was a limited visitor's list," he began slowly. "There's a specialized team of Aurors that were allowed, and that was it."

"You brought me there. Why didn't you tell them?"

"Why didn't you?"

Katie blinked. "You know what I told them?"

Marcus shrugged. It was an unimportant detail. "I'm an Auror, too. I could look at whatever case files come into the department. But I didn't go through the Personal Crime training, and so I wasn't allowed to be there. And since you never asked me to come visit, I thought you wouldn't want me to be there anyway. I thought maybe I reminded you too much of what happened."

Katie shivered and looked away. "Yes, but you're safe. You're the one I feel safe with."

"They're dead, by the way," he told her, voice bland. It was if he was merely commenting on the summer weather outside. There was no hint of the struggle it had been to find each of the six men that had been there, of the curses fired back and forth. There was no hint of the grim determination he had in tracking them down and making sure they were dead for hurting Katie. He hadn't wanted to examine that himself. There was nothing between them, no relationship at all. Yet seeing her in that abandoned house, left for dead after her brutal attack... He couldn't pretend he had never hoped for more. He couldn't pretend that it had twisted his gut a thousand different ways as he prayed she was still alive. Marcus had hoped he could have some kind of chance with her, but their paths had never seemed to cross in the prior year. And now it was going to be impossible, if she shook and trembled and had horrific nightmares still.

"H-how do you know?" Katie stammered, shocked.

"I killed them myself," Marcus told her evenly. "They won't ever hurt you again."

Katie supposed she should have been relieved, but she couldn't feel it. She simply felt numb inside. "But they do, every time I try to sleep. Every time I try to turn around and there's a shadow there and I jump..." She reached out and grasped his hand, not sure why he of all people was the one that she felt safe with. "But thank you."

"I'm sorry I didn't get there in time," Marcus told her quietly, his thumb moving over the back of her hand gently. He was heartened when she didn't pull away or flinch in fear. "I'm sorry you're going through this right now. I wish I could do something to make it better somehow."

Katie's eyes sharpened. "You're an Auror."

"Yes," he began slowly, feeling as though he was about to be trapped neatly into something terrible.

"You can obliviate people."

The bottom dropped out of Marcus' stomach. "That's not the answer to anything..."

"Neither is facing your fears," Katie nearly snarled. "I did that, it doesn't work. It did nothing but give me even more nightmares." She launched herself at him, digging at his arms to look for his wand holster. He had to have it somewhere. They tumbled to the floor, and she didn't even care that he wound up pinning her down, hands over her wrists and his thighs straddling her waist. She wasn't afraid of him, wasn't fearful he would harm her. He was there to protect her, she was sure. She had no rational basis for this, no reason to believe in this man she barely knew. But she did, and she pleaded with her eyes. "Please, Marcus," she whispered. "I can't bear it anymore."

"I'm not an Obliviator," Marcus told her. "I could bollocks it up. I could wipe your mind entirely clean of everything _but_ those times. I could reduce you to a gibbering idiot." _You could forget me,_ he thought, his gut churning. _You could forget I ever existed, and then I'd really be nothing to you._

Katie pulled her wrists easily from his grasp. Though she could reach out and touch his lips, when he drew her fingertips into his mouth almost unconsciously, she flinched and pulled back. "I want to touch you," she whispered, her voice breaking. "I want to touch you and not remember what they did to me. I want it to be you I think of, not them."

Marcus sighed and got off of her. He drew out his wand carefully, holding it between them. "This is no fairy tale ending," he told her. "This isn't how it's going to be."

"I don't want a fairy tale," Katie whispered. "They leave out the horrid bits that really happen. I just want peace."

"I can't promise I'll do a good enough job. You might remember some of it." Marcus sighed as she pulled his hand so that his wand was pointing at her chest, her expression one of abject misery. "Don't forget me, Katie," he said softly. "I've broken a dozen laws already, I don't want it to be for nothing."

"I won't forget you," she promised, her lips curling into a sad smile. "I've always paid attention, you know. You kept knocking me off my broom fourth year and it didn't make me stop liking you. I don't think forgetting the past two years would change that."

Nodding, Marcus pointed his wand at her forehead. _"Obliviate."_

Katie collapsed to the sitting room floor, her eyelids fluttering. For a moment, Marcus couldn't breathe. Had he gone too far with the spell?

She opened her eyes after a moment and pushed herself up to a sitting position. "Flint?" she asked, brows furrowed. "What're you doing here?" She looked around, confused. "Wait... Why aren't I at Hogwarts?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"I was getting on the train to go to school for seventh year." She looked at him carefully, taking in the Auror robes he was wearing. "Did something happen?"

"Do you trust me?"

The confusion eased. "Yes," she said, voice laced with wonder. "I don't bloody know why, though."

Marcus laced his fingers through hers. "Then trust me on this when I tell you that something terrible had happened, but now you've forgotten it."

Katie frowned at him. "I asked you to, didn't I?" She blinked at his nod. "Oh. So it was really bad, then."

"I'd understand if you wanted me to leave..." Marcus began. It was too much to hope she would want him to stay.

But she was shaking her head. "Stay. Tell me what else happened, the things I missed that I should know." She gave him a shy smile, and it must have been what she was like before the war began to touch her. "I must trust you to pieces to have to do this, after all."

Marcus smiled at her. "More than anything," he said, settling in to sit beside her. She was still smiling at him, that soft way she had back when getting ready to fly on the pitch. "I promised to protect you," he said, voice quiet and laced with determination. "No matter what."

She looked at him with clear eyes that held no memory of her nightmares. "Thank you."

And then it was time to start again.

The End.


End file.
